Male Pattern Appetite

Wit and wisdom about domestic life from Dispatch columnist Joe Blundo.

Every American man goes through stages in his eating life. I suppose women do, too, but I dare not touch the subject. My wife reads this.

In the interests of promoting better nutrition and better understanding between the sexes, I've identified the Six Stages of Male Eating.

I should note that I am not a dietitian, just a man with a long history of eating. What better qualification do you need?

Here are the Six Stages:

1. Young adult male You will eat anything, as long as there's a lot of it. Heartburn is an unknown malady. Fat delights you. You laugh in the face of cholesterol. You can drink beer before 9 a.m. without feeling like a degenerate.

2. New husband You can still eat the way you did as a single person but not without the risk of disapproval. You have married someone who loves having breakfast with you, provided you're not eating tailgate party food at 7:30 a.m.

"I was looking forward to a romantic breakfast," she says.

"Can't a chili dog be romantic?" you say.

She leaves the room. You think she's upset because you didn't share your

Cheetos.

3. Young dad Children change and complicate a man's eating life.

On the one hand, you want your child to eat a healthy diet. On the other hand, you realize that the wrong choice of vegetable, when presented to a 2-year-old, can be enough to incite a dinner table civil war.

Are you going to cave into a child's every food whim? Of course not. Just some of them. One day you wake up and realize it's been a year and a half since you had a mushroom.

On the plus side, you're getting all the macaroni and cheese you could ever want.

4. Middle-aged man Food is still your friend, but now it's the friend who wakes you up at 2 a.m. to reminisce about the pepperoni pizza you ate just a few hours ago.